4: Mistakes to Avoid When Carb Loading

Did you know that carb loading can provide a 2-4% performance increase? That might not seem like a lot, but in a half or full ironman that is huge! 2% of a 10 hour race is 12 minutes! Many of my clients have had great success with proper carb loading and here are some of my insights so that you can too!

We cover:

-how to figure out how many carbs you need

-what foods are best for carbloading

-what types of foods to avoid

-common mistakes to avoid so that you actually carb load properly

Full transcription of the episode: 

Welcome to today’s podcast. This is episode four and I’m talking about mistakes to avoid when carb loading. So this is kind of on my mind, I had a discovery call with a client who was interested in working with me. So a discovery call is a call with someone that wants to learn more about my services and working one on one. They were just kind of telling me about some of their nutrition goals and one thing that they mentioned was they had done a long course triathlon. It wasn’t quite a Half Ironman distance, but it was longer than an Olympic. They mentioned feeling just pretty tired by the end of the run just kind of lacking the energy. So there’s lots of reasons for this and it could be maybe not fueling enough during the race, but one thing that can really help you feel energized at the end of the race, the end of your triathlon, to feel good in the end of your run. One of the things that can help is proper carb loading.

So, I want to talk about that today, how to actually carb load properly and avoid a lot of common mistakes that I see people making. The first mistake I see is not carb loading at the right times or for the right events. So carb loading really means that you’re maximizing your muscle glycogen stores. Muscle glycogen is stored in our muscles and our liver. And during endurance exercise, this gets broken down into glucose, which fuels our muscles. Another fuel source during exercise can be fat and then another source is fuel (carbohydrates) that we’re taking in during that event or food that we’ve eaten beforehand.

Muscle glycogen stores last about 90 to 120 minutes of moderate to intense exercise. If we run out of glycogen, we’re gonna hit the wall. So that’s why it’s really important to fuel our body during exercise to spare that muscle glycogen to make it last longer. So the idea of carb loading is that you’re maximizing your muscle glycogen stores, you’re making sure that they can last as long as possible. That in combination with fueling properly during a long distance or endurance event is going to make sure you’re not hitting the wall, you have good consistent energy levels throughout that whole event.

With that said, we want to carb load for races that are going to be about an hour and a half two hours or longer. So we don’t really need to be doing it for 5 of 10k running races, probably not a sprint triathlon, but anything above that, like Olympic and longer, marathons and half marathons.

The second mistake I see is not consuming enough carbohydrates and not doing it for enough days. So when you calculate the amount of carbohydrates that you want to consume for carb loading, it is probably a lot higher than your typical diet. So the way I recommend it to my clients is to take your weight in kilograms and multiply that by 8 and then that’s going to be the number of carbs you want to have per day or per 24 hours.

So, let’s say you’re 154 pounds, divide that by 2. 2 to get your weight in kilograms, which is 70kg.  So if you multiply that by 8, that’s 560 grams of carbohydrates per day. Now, you’re going to want to do this carb loading for anywhere from to one to three days, depending on the length of your triathlon. So for an Olympic triathlon or a half marathon, do one day, but a Half or Full Ironman, I would do two to three days.

So we may think we’re carb loading by just kind of adding a little bit of extra carbs to our plate, but it is a higher level than you may be usually doing. So to really do it properly, you want to make sure that you calculate the amount of carbs that you have and then again, do it for enough days. A lot of times I talk to maybe new clients and ask them, have you carb loaded before? Have you tried it? And I get a common answer being, yeah, I have like a good pasta dinner the night before. So it’s really not possible to actually carb load just the night before a race. And if you’re trying to get hundreds of grams of carbs just in that one meal, there are going to be some problems, right? It’s going to be hard to fully digest that. It may lead to some GI issues and that the next day. So yeah, that’s kind of one mistake to avoid, you want to really do it properly. Have enough carbs. To add to that point is that it is important to space out the carbohydrates evenly throughout the day as well.

Another mistake that may come with that is trying to get all of your carbs from whole healthy foods.So, what I mean by that is, you know, a lot of whole grains, brown rice, quinoa, fruits, vegetables. It’s going to be pretty difficult to get all of your carb loading in from whole foods. The reason for that is because a lot of these whole food carbohydrates can come with a lot of fiber as well. So fiber can be pretty filling and if you listen to my other podcasts about GI issues and concerns  you know, sometimes too much fiber can lead us to having to use the washroom,  during our events as well, which we want to try to avoid.

So, you don’t have to fully eliminate fiber, but we want to make sure that while we’re adding in extra carbohydrates into our diet, we’re not adding in a ton of extra fiber than our body is used to. So, this is the time to probably switch your whole grains to whites. So you may want to look to using white rice white bread, maybe Instead of big bowls of oatmeal all the time for each of those breakfast days you may do things like pancakes or a low fiber cereal, have snacks like pretzels or saltine crackers or low fiber crackers, granola bars, energy bars such as Clif bars or  Nature’s Bakery Fig Bars, Bobo’s Bar. These are all really high carb, pretty low fiber bars, which can help get those carbs up.

Here’s the time where you’re probably going to be adding some sugar to things, so adding jam, honey, maple syrup, maybe candy, graham crackers, applesauce. These are all examples of pretty low fiber, high carb foods that you can eat that aren’t going to be too filling and add additional fiber to your day. Now is not the time to be pretty fearful of sugars and added sugars because it’s going to help you meet your carb needs without being too filling. So you can have juice you can kind of look at getting carbs in a liquid form if you’re finding it hard to consume from food alone. So juice, sports drinks, chocolate milks, making smoothies can also be really helpful too.

 So another mistake I see is that as you, in those carb loading days, we’re not cutting back on our protein and fats enough. So really with carb loading, you’re making a higher percentage of our calories come from carbohydrates and less of our calories coming from fats and protein. So if you’re not cutting back on the fat or protein enough, you’re going to probably feel more full, and it’s going to be more difficult to get in all the carbs that you need. And then if you’re getting too much fat, it can also lead to some GI issues, potentially. So, you want to see that the carbohydrates that you’re choosing are not only low in fiber, but they’re not too high in fat. So, you know, we might think of, oh, like, uh, cookies, or donuts, or pastries. They may seem good and high in carbohydrates, but they can potentially, some potentially can be pretty high in fat. So we want to make sure that the carbs that we’re choosing are low fiber and low in fat.

The other thing to do is look at the proportion of the foods that you’re putting on your plate So let’s say for dinner, you know, you want to make a pasta dish, right?

So instead of a normal night where maybe you fill 1/3 of the plate with pasta, ½ with veggies and 1/3 third with protein, we’re probably going to fill about 60 percent or maybe more of some pasta. Add some bread to that, a little bit of vegetables and a smaller portion of protein than you normally would. It’s okay that your protein is going to be a little bit lower in these couple days.

The other thing to do is like, look at a typical breakfast. I’m someone who recommends, you know getting enough protein with breakfast, but here we’re going to have to cut back. So if you’re someone maybe that usually does a couple of eggs with some avocado toast and veggies, for carb loading try something like pancakes. With pancakes, you can add some syrup, a bit of fruit, bananas. Primarily, this is all carbohydrate based. Or, if you really want to stick to eggs, cut back on the number of eggs that you would typically do. Add a couple extra slices of toast. Add a glass of juice or a side of yogurt to kind of boost the carbohydrates of that meal.

So, there’s different ways. Same thing with, you know, maybe a healthy snack could be… Apple and almonds. So maybe you do the apple, but instead of the almonds, which is more of a fat, we’re going to add some extra carbohydrates. So we might add some pretzels or some crackers with that. So just be mindful that as we’re adding those carbs, we’re not adding too much extra fats and protein.And a way to kind of do that is visually look at the proportion of the foods on your plate and watch that the carbohydrates are not too high in fat and fiber.

Another mistake that can potentially happen with carb loading is, you know, not trying it beforehand. So you don’t always have to practice your carb loading, but if you’re someone who maybe has a sensitive stomach, you get a little bit nervous race day, try carb loading before a long training session. So maybe before you do some race day nutrition practice, if you have a long bike and a brick workout, practice carb loading at least the day before. It gives you a chance to practice what foods you like, what’s going to work well, so that you’re not unsure of the whole process.

So, there you go. Those are some common carb loading mistakes and how to avoid them. So the first one was, doing it for the wrong events, or not doing it at all. The second was not getting enough carbohydrates. So again, try to calculate it out if you can, if you want to be a little precise with it. And make sure you’re spacing out those carbs throughout the day, and spacing it out over a few days before your event, depending how long your event is going to be.

Other mistakes are consuming foods that have too much fiber or fats and not cutting back on your protein enough. These reasons are important to prevent any GI distress like gas, bloating, diarrhea on race day and to also make it easier to consume adequate carbohydrates, you’re not feeling overly full and then so that you’re not going so much more over on your calories on those extra days and the last one just being kind of fearful of sugar and processed foods in those days because you know what, these are actually really going to be helpful for you. So I hope that helps if you have any questions, let me know, my contact information is in the show notes. And have a great day!